Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Debate between Lord Hanson of Flint and Viscount Goschen

Committee stage
Thursday 26th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Hanson of Flint) (Lab)]

I say in response to the noble Lord, Lord Framlingham, that there is a great sense of urgency from this Government on the issue that he raises. The people are not “wandering up the beaches” of Dover. They are being collected by boats in the channel when the criminal gangs bring them across, and then they are taken for identification and processing. It has been a long while since people walked up the beaches of Dover—it was under a previous Government that they put their feet in that Kent sand. They are now being dealt with in an effective way.

The purpose of the border commander and the clauses before us today is not to have the limited ambition that the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, indicated he thought was behind the Bill; it is to maximise the ambition and ensure that we put it in place strongly and effectively. That goes to the heart of the noble Viscount’s comments as well, because we are very clear that the border commander has a number of key roles to play. The border commander has been put in place to co-ordinate and organise—yes—but he has a significant budget of £150 million this year and in the recent spending review has been given by the Chancellor an additional significant budget for the three years hence.

The purpose of that co-ordinating role is to do what I think is appropriate, which is to co-ordinate and bring together agencies in the UK. The commander will also, on behalf of the Home Secretary and the Government, take part in further negotiations with our partner colleagues in Europe and the Middle East, as has been seen today, to ensure that we put in place mechanisms to reduce the flow that the noble Lord, Lord Framlingham, rightly highlighted as an important issue for us to take forward.

[Viscount Goschen (Con)]

I am grateful to the Minister. Before he moves on from the points that I made, can he answer the question about what the commander will be able to do under the provisions of the Bill that his office cannot do currently, on a non-statutory footing? We do not need new legislative provisions to achieve co-ordination, advice and budgetary management—witness the fact that there is already a commander in place who is busy co-ordinating.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I appreciate the noble Viscount’s comments, but the clauses in Chapter 1—for example, “Duty to prepare annual reports”, “Duties of cooperation etc” and “The Board” overseeing all that—underpinned by statutory function give this House the confidence that there is a legislative background to those requirements on the Border Security Commander. The noble Viscount is right that the current Border Security Commander, appointed by the Home Secretary, is undertaking those roles as a civil servant, but it is important that we underpin that with a legislative framework so that this House, the House of Commons, the Government and the people are clear about what the roles and responsibilities are. We have taken that view, and the noble Viscount may disagree or want further clarification, but that is the purpose of the first 12 clauses of the Bill.

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[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am again grateful for the amendments tabled, because they have sparked a discussion on a range of issues.

In response to the noble Lord, Lord Empey, I note that the Government will set objectives, will have policies on these areas and will, as they have already done, set out their proposals and plans to deal with these issues. We are establishing the Border Security Commander post to assist the Government in the effective co-ordination and delivery of those points. We have put in £150 million in this financial year to support that post. We have agreed with the SR, through the hard work of the current Border Security Commander, an additional £280 million over the three-year period. That is determined to deliver on the Government’s strategic objectives to secure our borders and to provide the security on all the issues that we discussed in the debate on the previous set of amendments.

There are wider issues, which the noble Lord, Lord Empey, mentioned, and which form part of the Government’s consideration under the immigration White Paper that they produced four or five weeks ago and presented to this House. It has masses of detail about the long-term issues that the noble Lord, Lord Alton, mentioned, including the interpretation of Article 8. Clearly and self-evidently, we will examine the report that the JCHR—the Select Committee of the noble Lord, Lord Alton—has produced on those issues; it is a good, wide-reaching document and the Government will consider it and respond to it in due course.

This is, therefore, not the only tool in the box to address the wider issues and downstream challenges around why people are moving in the first place and seeking asylum through either illegal or irregular means. There are issues to do with the interpretation of Article 8, and there is a constant flow of activity in the Home Office assessing all the issues that the noble Lords, Lord Alton and Lord Empey, mentioned.

I will turn my focus back to the amendments, which are about the Border Force Commander. The strategic priorities, which the noble Viscount, Lord Goschen, mentioned, are very clear. In Clause 3, we are trying to give great scope to the Border Security Commander to produce a plan to deal with the challenges that are discussed with the Home Secretary on a weekly basis and to deliver effective outcomes.

Since being in post, the Border Security Commander has, for example, struck new anti-smuggling action plan agreements with the G7 and bilateral agreements with Italy, Germany, Serbia and the Balkan states. He has increased UK operations with Europol, which the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, mentioned. He has essentially been the driving force behind the Calais group—France, Belgium, Holland, and the United Kingdom—in looking at what measures we need to take.

There are additional resources, and the noble Viscount rightly challenged us on how they are used. They have been used to date to employ additional people under Border Security Command initial direction, to support work on a range of issues. For example, over 200 people are working in a variety of areas on the border security strategy as a whole, and there is support for 100 new officers to deal with Border Security Command as a whole. That has now closed twice as many social media accounts as before, increased the cost of gang and boat engine packages, and supported over 80 ongoing investigations with the National Crime Agency. A whole range of things is going on now, and again, I hope that, with the legal framework in place in the Bill, there will be, as the Bill says, an annual strategy and an annual report to Parliament via the Home Secretary on the outcomes of these proposals and policies.

The group of amendments which was produced by the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Lochiel—again, they are perfectly legitimate questions to ask—set out effectively issues that are in the functions of the commander in Clause 3, including requirements for the commander to seek to maximise

“the effectiveness of the activities of partner authorities relating to threats to border security”.

The first of these objectives is the very one that the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, mentioned. The Government have been clear that preventing dangerous crossings and dismantling organised gangs that are facilitating those journeys is a top priority. Indeed, the work of the Border Security Command and its partners is now delivering results.

Just this month, a suspected organised crime boss and his associates were arrested for facilitating hundreds of individuals entering the UK illegally as part of a surge in law enforcement activity co-ordinated by the Border Security Command. The Government are working to restore order and control of the migration system in the wider ways that we have talked about with the noble Lord, Lord Empey. That is central. I welcome, in a sense, the agreement and understanding from the amendments, but it is central to the core proposals of the Border Security Command.

A further amendment would also allow Border Security Command to issue directions to partner authorities for specified purposes. I just do not think that the power to direct is required. In oral evidence sessions in the House of Commons, we heard from the National Crime Agency and the National Police Chiefs’ Council. They welcomed and supported the role and collaboration to date with the Border Security Commander and the arrangements provided for in the Bill, which will reflect and respect the operational requirements of the various board members.

I know he is not here at the moment, but the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, raised the issue of operational responsibilities at Second Reading. We have to respect that, but there is a role for co-ordination and extra financial support and direction from the Border Security Commander centrally. Under Clause 5, partner authorities have a duty to co-operate with the commander in so far as it is reasonably practical for them to do so, and under Clause 3, partner authorities must have regard to the strategic priorities, which will have been endorsed and consulted on, supported by the Secretary of State and by the board, and in Clause 3(4)(b), the current wording in the Bill ensures that all parts of the system work coherently to tackle the very border security threats that the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, has raised in his amendment, while respecting the operational independence of the various partner authorities. The amendment as proposed would potentially undermine that valuable operational independence.

So I understand where the noble Viscount is coming from and the need to press on those matters—and I understand the need for the noble Viscount to intervene, which I will allow him to do.

[Viscount Goschen (Con)]

It is very generous of the Minister to interrupt his afternoon and his peroration to let me do so.

I asked the Minister just to give the Committee a bit more detail. He talked about some teams of people who were undertaking various different tasks. But what is the anticipated annual operating budget of the organisation, and what is the very approximate staff complement that is anticipated for the organisation once it is up and running?

He talked about various initiatives, saying that the Border Force Commander had done this and done that, all of which sounded very positive and laudable. But are we talking about the border commander’s organisation undertaking executive programmes: is it delivering some of these initiatives? The way it is portrayed in the Bill and the way the Minister has described it, the organisation’s individual will be co-ordinating but the actual delivery will be done through other partner agencies. Is that still the case?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The Border Security Commander has a co-ordinating but also a strategic directional role, so, in consultation with the various partners, he will be producing a plan which brings together various partners who are currently operating independently, some of whom are not even within the Home Office’s direct responsibility areas, because there are, as we talked about earlier on, biosecurity elements of Defra and others there, to effect a strategic plan for the three-year period of the SR, for which he has been given £280 million to determine how the plan is used and implemented from the SR settlement.

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[Viscount Goschen (Con)]

My Lords, my Amendment 11 in this group is an amendment to my noble friend’s Amendment 10.

Before I get into the detail of it, I must support what my noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Empey, said in the previous group. They put their finger on one of the key issues: namely, that the Secretary of State cannot step back and abrogate her responsibility to set strategic priorities. Surely the Secretary of State is ultimately responsible for setting the strategic priorities. It would be better for the Bill to say that the Secretary of State will publish the strategic priorities for the organisation, having been advised by the border commander and having consulted the commander and other relevant agencies. It seems quite a circular argument for the border commander to be invited to come up with their own strategic priorities and then set out how they intend to address them—there is an element of marking your own homework here. We will listen carefully to what the Minister has to say to the point about the strategic priorities coming from the border commander rather than from the Secretary of State. It may well be something we wish to return to.

The origins of Amendment 11 lie in an exchange I had with the Minister at Second Reading, to which he followed up with a letter. The question I had asked him was this: what is the Government’s understanding of the specific factors that drive desperate people to take their lives and those of their families into their own hands and undertake a sea crossing with, potentially, the peril of death or serious injury? Why would they come from at least one other safe country—generally France—or a series of safe countries they might have passed through? Why would they risk everything, including their lives and those of their families, to come specifically to the UK? What is it about the regulatory, commercial or cultural situation in the UK that causes people to come here?

The Minister was kind enough to provide me with a substantial letter, which I hope he will not mind me paraphrasing by saying that his answer was, “We don’t really know”. It was more complicated than that but that was the thrust of it. I think we should know and should be honest about the factors, whether they are to do with the support provided, the level of control we intend to exert over people who come here irregularly or illegally, or the organised crime gangs—all factors the Minister touched on—or whether it is also to do with the chances of deportation. I wonder whether the Minister can assist the Committee by telling us the average rate of deportation of people who have come here through illegal or irregular means or who have crossed the channel in small boats?

I believe there is another factor as well, which is the opportunity for irregular migrants to take on paid work, whatever the regulations say. I am sure the Minister is very well aware, for example, of the coverage on the front pages of national newspapers yesterday about people coming from government-funded hotels where they have been housed and undertaking work for some big companies—as a contractor, I suspect. We have to grapple with those factors and be honest about them. We need to tackle the demand side as well as the supply side. I appreciate that this Bill is very much about addressing the supply side, and quite rightly so, but it is incredibly important that we look at the specific demand factors that are driving people to risk their lives to come to the UK in preference to other European countries.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to noble Lords. I will try to answer the noble Viscount immediately. It was very kind that he paraphrased my reply as “We don’t know”. A tadge unfair, I fear, but an opinion none the less. We do know about the many issues that the noble Lord, Lord Alton, refers to on a regular basis—war, hunger and oppression—that drive people to leave their homes or force people out of their homes. There are many people who are criminally trafficked across Europe. There are many people who attempt to come to the United Kingdom because of simple things such as speaking English as opposed to other foreign languages or because of the nirvana promised to them by criminal gangs. There is a range of pull factors that we know about, and we are consistently assessing those.

The noble Viscount might be interested to know that, under the previous Government, in the years between January 2018 and March 2025, 94% of small boat arrivals had an asylum claim raised, and outcomes from those asylum claims varied. People from Afghanistan had 37% of asylum claims agreed, for people from Syria it was 99%, for people from Eritrea it was 86%, for people from Iran it was 48% and for people from Sudan it was 98%. There is a variety. That is because the factors that the noble Lord, Lord Alton, rightly continually raises in this House are very often push factors rather than pull factors. They are push factors from areas of high levels of poverty, war or other disruptive influences.

Our model has to be to try to smash the criminal gangs and to remove their ability to traffic effectively, for the reasons that we have debated all afternoon. In that, the role of the border commander is critical. The amendments that have been brought forward by His Majesty’s Opposition’s Front Bench look at, first, specifying the frequency with which the Border Security Commander must issue a strategic priority document. The Border Security Commander can issue a strategic priority document to partner authorities setting out the principal threats to border security, but I want the Border Security Commander to have flexibility to update those priorities as and when threats evolve. The very changes that the noble Viscount and the noble Lord, Lord Alton, have mentioned might well impact upon that. Under the terms of the amendment, the production of a document annually would not allow that to happen. I want it to be a fluid operation between the Border Security Commander and others.

Members have also asked who is setting the strategic priority. The framework we have set out in the Bill is clear: the Border Security Commander will be setting strategic objectives, having consulted a board that is established under the Bill, having consulted partner agencies which have operational responsibility—as mentioned—under the Bill, having discussed it with the Home Secretary and the Home Secretary, who will themselves have discussed it with other Ministers, and having produced clear evidence of what the pressures on border security are. The plan will then be produced. We are currently looking at the issues that I mentioned earlier—the operational delivery of that and the members of staff, and so on, downstream—about which I will write to the noble Viscount.

We have a £280 million resource for the next three years of the spending review, and we will be looking at how we do that when allocations are made later this year. However, I say to His Majesty’s Opposition Front Bench and other noble Lords who have raised these issues that the flexibility to produce a plan with the Border Security Commander under the strategic objectives set by the Government is critical.

Other amendments set out that additional information should be included in the strategic priority document. The Government are working hard to prevent dangerous sea crossings, to target smuggling gangs, to make sure that they do not put lives at risk and to address the factors that are driving illegal immigration from safe countries. The strategic policy document is issued to partner authorities and sets out the strategic priorities that they must have in exercising those functions. Again, I hope the noble Lord will reflect on the proposals in the Bill in due course because it is not clear how suitable the assessment set out in the amendment would be for such a document.

Amendment 12 aims to ensure that the strategic priority document issued by the Border Security Commander and the UK border strategy are supportive of each other. Again, border security is a fundamental part of the wider strategic approach to the border and strategic priorities for border security, which will help to drive the wider UK Government approach. Indeed, the whole purpose of the Bill is to ensure that we coherently and sensibly convene activity across the whole UK border system. It is therefore not really plausible to imagine a situation whereby the commander’s priorities, setting consultation with the board, would be at odds with wider priorities set by other agencies. The whole purpose of the Bill is to provide the grasp, coherence, drive and strategic forum for the exercise of these measures to deal with the very issues that we have all mentioned in this short debate.

I hope that helps regarding the amendments. We can return to these on Report if need be, but I hope that for the moment I have addressed the issues raised.

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[Viscount Goschen (Con)]

The Minister was doing so well until he decided it would be a great moment to start beating up the Opposition. I think we are all on the same side on this. We share common objectives here and it has been a great, positive debate, so that is really not necessary. In so many of the comments that I make, it does not matter that we are sitting on opposite sides of the Committee.

To say that we are going to just talk about the outcomes without talking about the inputs is crazy. I will definitely come back to press the Minister further if he does not wish to accept my amendment. The noble Lord has come forward with a package of measures. We need to know what the ongoing costing is, and we need to be able to extrapolate as far as we can between the input and the output and whether that money would be better spent, for example, by the agencies that are being co-ordinated.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

In the spirit of co-operation and the hand of friendship that the noble Viscount has reached out, I say that it is a valid challenge. There is a place for accounts and there is a place for reports on performance, but it is a valid challenge to which we will return in due course. I will certainly reflect on the points he has mentioned, which is the purpose of our discussion today.

I just wished to put the statistics on record because I did not wish to let down the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, or for him to think I am never going to be a bruiser again on these issues. Therefore, it is important occasionally to put some facts on the record. Those are not my facts; they are government statistics that go to the heart of the amendment brought forward by the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, about whether we include them in the annual report or, as we do now, produce them on a quarterly basis on a range of those measures.

I do not wish to let the noble Viscount think I have missed the other point he raised, about the £150 million this year for the cost of the Border Security Commander. I am sure he will be pleased to know that this was new money. Effectively, in being new money, it was savings from the money that was allocated for the Rwanda scheme, which never actually materialised once the current Government came into place. We have reallocated Rwanda resources to the Border Force and the Border Security Command. We have also reallocated it elsewhere to help speed up asylum system claims by recruiting additional staff.

Jumping ahead slightly to future clauses in the Bill, that is essentially part of the recalibration that the current Government undertook on election just after this time last year to make some real changes and to try to improve longer-term performance on the issues on which we both agree: to reduce illegal migration and to respond positively to irregular migration in due course.

The noble Viscount’s second amendment mentions the partner authorities who attend the commander’s board, who would be able to collaborate on the development of the annual reports. The commander will not create this report in isolation; it will be a collaborative effort, but the commander’s job, self-evidently, is to pull together an annual report that shows how they have performed against the objectives that have been set in the strategic priorities. I do not believe that the amendment is necessary, but we will reflect on those matters and we can return to them in due course.

I hope that I have answered those points, and I look forward to hearing the response from the noble Lord, Lord Cameron.

Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill

Debate between Lord Hanson of Flint and Viscount Goschen

Committee stage
Monday 3rd February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Goschen (Con)]

My Lords, I do not think it was me.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I thought the noble Lord mentioned 800.

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[Viscount Goschen (Con)]

It was the other one.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

Sorry, I left north Wales at 7 am, so it has been a long day already. The noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, mentioned the figure of 800. Why have we come to our figure? I can make all sorts of justifications. Two hundred takes into account the greatest number of large premises, so it is a figure that we have determined accordingly. We have to set the figure at a certain level and we have done so following the wide range of consultation that has taken place.